Sony LinkBuds Clip: A Forgettable Entry in Open Earbuds
▼ Summary
– The Sony LinkBuds Clip are open-style clip earbuds designed for listening while maintaining awareness of your surroundings.
– They offer a comfortable, secure fit for many, especially with included silicone cushions, though the fit can feel loose without them.
– Their sound is clear in standard mode but lacks strong bass, and they excel at call quality due to effective noise-reduction technology.
– Key omissions for their $230 price include no wireless charging, no LDAC codec support, and finicky touch controls.
– The reviewer concludes they are good earbuds but not distinct enough from cheaper competitors to recommend at full price.
Sony’s latest entry into the open-ear audio market, the LinkBuds Clip, aims to blend situational awareness with personal audio. These clip-style earbuds let you enjoy music or take calls while staying connected to your environment, a design growing in popularity. However, despite solid construction and decent audio quality, they struggle to justify their premium $229.99 price point when compared to more affordable competitors offering similar experiences.
The design wraps around the ear’s helix like a cuff. A small spherical speaker sits just outside the ear canal, connected by a flexible band to a larger capsule that rests on the outer ear. The aesthetic is subtle, with slightly glossy finishes in colors like lavender, green, greige, and black. You can further personalize them with five different snap-on case covers. Finding a comfortable fit requires some adjustment due to varying ear shapes; the intended mid-ear position might not work for everyone. The fit can feel somewhat loose, and the band lacks the flexibility of rivals like the Shokz OpenDots One. Sony includes color-matched silicone cushions that slide onto the band to improve security. With these cushions, I achieved a comfortable, stable fit that lasted a full workday, often forgetting I was wearing them. However, those with larger ears might feel a pinching sensation.
Sound performance presents a trade-off. While the cushions enhance comfort, they slightly distance the speaker from the ear canal, reducing bass response. Like most open earbuds, the Clips are inherently light on deep, thumping bass. They offer three listening modes: Standard, Voice Boost, and Sound Leakage Reduction. Standard mode delivers the most natural sound with a clear midrange. Voice Boost adds excessive vocal presence for music but aids podcast clarity. The Sound Leakage Reduction mode severely mutes high frequencies, making music sound muffled, though significant sound leakage wasn’t an issue in the other modes. The companion Sound Connect app provides sound presets and a 10-band equalizer for customization, along with Sony’s DSEE feature for enhancing compressed audio.
Where the LinkBuds Clip excel is call quality. A dedicated AI noise-reduction chip and bone-conduction sensor effectively isolate the wearer’s voice from ambient noise. During calls on busy streets, my voice came through clearly to listeners, with background traffic suppressed. Occasional wind gusts or sirens were faintly audible to callers but were fleeting. The open design, however, sometimes made it harder for me to hear the other person in very noisy environments.
The feature set feels lean for the cost. Battery life is respectable at nine hours per charge, with an additional 28 hours from the case, but the case lacks wireless charging. They support only SBC and AAC codecs, omitting Sony’s high-resolution LDAC. They also miss features like audio sharing, found on other Sony models. The touch controls on the band can be finicky, with a small, unforgiving tap zone. Commands like two taps to play/pause or four taps to adjust volume often failed to register if my finger was slightly off-target, especially during activities like jogging.
The Sound Connect app offers a novel “scene-based listening” feature. It can automate settings based on activity or location, like starting a specific playlist when you begin a run or switching audio apps when you arrive home. The app can also read notifications aloud. It’s an interesting concept for those willing to invest time in setup.
Sony’s move into the clip-style category makes sense, given its role in popularizing open earbuds. The LinkBuds Clip are competent, stylish, and comfortable. Yet, at their current price, they don’t distinguish themselves enough from cheaper alternatives like the Shokz OpenDots One or EarFun Clip. They become a much more compelling option only with a significant price drop. For now, unless their specific aesthetic is a major draw, most consumers are better off waiting for a sale or exploring less expensive rivals.
(Source: The Verge)
